East Bay Baseball Coach of the Year: Amador Valley's Lou Cesario

The Dons debuted in this season's first Bay Area News Group East Bay poll as the No. 2 team, but had several hiccups along the way. Amador Valley went 7-7 in East Bay Athletic League play, thanks to a late-season four-game losing streak that seemed to make a deep postseason run a long shot. But Cesario got the team to regroup and focus on restoring their image. They found their confidence and swagger again, never more so than during a 9-7 win over top-seeded Granada in the North Coast Section Division I semifinals. That win, over a team that was 24-1 entering the game and had beat the Dons twice by a combined score of 20-0, put Amador in the championship game against De La Salle. The Dons finished off a three-game season sweep of the Spartans to win their second NCS title in four years.